


we’re throwing off sparks

by allonsysouffle



Series: your city is ignited; [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Fake AH Crew, M/M, Pre-Crew, basically backstories of the crew members
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 09:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4430678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsysouffle/pseuds/allonsysouffle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is how the story goes: a soft boy becomes hard. a mansion burns, breaks. a child cries on two continents. a man is out of time.</p><p>this is how the story goes: they bite into the city, and the city bites back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. BLIND // WORLDS

**Author's Note:**

> pre-fake ah crew. prequels to ‘3:18 in los santos, san andreas’. as always, find me on tumblr at lindsqyjones, and twitter at @saltwaterrayne !  
> -E

Ray is ten years old, and unbearably optimistic.

He bounces on a threadbare couch in a dingy apartment in the part of Los Santos in which everyone is always tired, and he doesn’t notice the dark circles yet because he’s still at an age where nothing can possibly go wrong. 

His mother thinks he’s crazy, and adores him for it. For him, she works three jobs, holds in every cough and wheeze, hides the medical bills. For him, she becomes a mask.

He catches her on bad days, sometimes. He knows not to get involved.

Ray falls in love with arcade games and Skittles and his mother’s laugh- the rare one she only gives him when she’s not thinking about his father, the one which drips with honey and mischief and their heavily rationed joy.

Ray falls in love with whatever he has.

 

* * *

Ray is fourteen years old, and no one touches him for fear of freezing their hands.

His mother is lying right in front of him, but he can’t see her. She wanted a closed casket.

He tugs at the scratchy material of his suit jacket and wishes he could smell her perfume again, one last time. Wishes he could forget hearing her hyperventilate in the hospital before the heart monitor fell away into a flatline. Wishes he could forget her words- “ _my baby, please take care of my baby, my sunshine, my ray of sunshine-_ ”, how they tumbled out of her mouth and shattered to pieces on the white-tiled floor, how those white lips trembled. The memory lingers in his brain anyway.

Ray wishes it never happened, he wishes so _badly_ , with every fucking neuron in his brain. The white kids in the movies always got what they wanted, right? They always got the cure or the sword or the girl. They always had the cash to pay the hospital bills.

The world is blind. 

The suit’s too hot. He pulls at the collar, the cuff, the hem. There’s only a couple of other people at the funeral, work friends- she left her family behind when they moved from New York. He’s glad, in a way. He doesn’t have to speak to them.

Ray doesn’t fall in love with anything. 

 

* * *

 

Ray is sixteen years old, and is completely untouchable in his beautiful arrogance.

He’s running, panting, laughing, a butterfly knife in his hand. There’s a sliver of regret creeping into his thoughts, but there always is, because he’s doing what his mother so often warned him against. He remembers her telling him _whatever you do, chico, don’t get involved with the gangs, you’re smarter than that, be my good college boy someday, eh?_

But he got himself off the streets, didn’t he? Got himself a bed in the gang leader’s boarding house, didn’t he? They’re nice people, really, his gang, his Brown Boys- just teetering on the edge of the wrong side of the law. He’s got food, and water, and shelter... and only has to run from the cops maybe twice a week. All he’s gotta do is deal weed and, occasionally, help them fight for territory. It’s honestly the best offer a kid like him will ever get, in a town like this, with a name like his. It’s the closest thing he’s got to safety. And the guys are funny.

It does not occur to him that he’s becoming a child soldier.

Ray falls in love with the crack of a sniper rifle, with the smell of hash smoke and the taste of it rolling off his tongue, with the euphoria of thumbing through countless stacks of cash after a good deal, with the sunsets he sees painted in peach and fuchsia and lavender from his rooftops.

Ray falls in love with the city, and all the havoc he can wreak on it.

 

* * *

 

Ray is seventeen years old, and has fallen to pieces.

He’s breathing, heavy, terrible, lost. There’s blood on his hoodie- not his- and it smears, invisible, on the brick wall of the alleyway. 

His gang’s gone. Vagos, he thinks, probably. Stole all the weed, all the money, shot up the warehouse. He’s got his sniper rifle and a Twix bar and a fucking quarter. That’s it. 

He sinks to the ground, seeing their faces all roughed up, hearing the leader shout “GET OUT, NARVAEZ, WHILE YOU STILL-”, and remembering the mindlessness of it all- _run, run, run, run, run_.

Thinking is terrible. Remembering is worse. He tries to breathe, and fails. His frantic inhales become choked sobs and hiccups and muffled swearing. 

He tries again to breathe. Slowly. It works better this time. He doesn’t have the strength or the will to assess his options. He just cries, as quietly as he can, in that alley dripping with dirt, in that alley damp with the tears of a broken kid with no way to beat the system that’ll leave him rotting in a cell someday, leave him rotting on the sidewalk someday.

Ray doesn’t think about love at all.

 

* * *

 

Ray is eighteen years old, and learns what a family really is. 

He’s been hired, somehow, as a sniper for some crew with no name and a lot of cash under its belt. He meets the leader in an alley not unlike the one he collapsed in a year earlier, and it’s as shady as it can be. They’re both in hoodies and speak in hushed tones, like it makes a difference. 

He learns the leader’s name is Michael, and he looks far too normal to be a criminal. His freckled baby-face gives away his youth, his inexperience. 

“Brown Boys, huh? Thought they were all dead. How’d you escape?”

“I went out to buy a Twix bar.”

“Oh.” He pauses. “So, you snipe, right?”

“Yup.”

“Aren’t you a little _young_ -”

“Yup.”

“Huh. Good.” 

Michael’s smile drips with thrill and danger. 

He joins the crew for free after his first job. They work well together, and honestly, Ray’s got nowhere else to go. 

They’re vigilantes, of sorts- that’s what they claim. A bunch of teenagers, really, trying to break the system- or, at least, trying to stop the pigs from ruining their fun. They’ve never had a name, and never will, but for the initials ‘IB’- none of them are quite sure where that came from. They steal from the rich and keep the cash for themselves, they piss off cops, they fight anything and everything that comes after them, never in the wrong. Eight kids against the world. It shouldn’t work. It really shouldn’t. Ray knows this. 

Ray doesn’t care.

Ray falls in love with all of them, if he’s being honest with himself- with their rebelliousness, with their laughter and their unparalleled success; with Barbara’s motherliness, with Andrew’s stories, with Mike’s stupidity, with Dylon’s innocence, with Lindsay’s fire, with Kerry’s optimism; with the wind twisting slipstreams through his hair, with the feeling of _home_ blooming in his chest for the first time in four years.

Ray falls in love with Michael most of all.

 

* * *

 

Ray is nineteen years old, and he’s not smart but he sure as hell is happy.

Michael is kissing him again. It’s cold in Los Santos, for once, and they’re returning from an armed robbery, cash in hand, stopped in an alleyway, and it’s _always_ an alleyway with those two, but Ray supposes it doesn’t matter, because they are kissing and Michael’s hands are warm and they’ve learned by now that giving a fuck is the first step of any recipe for disaster. They press together so close all Ray can see is freckles, all he can hear is breathing, heavy and heavy, singsong and whispering, in time with the beats of his heart. 

Michael laughs when he throws grenades, Ray’s noticed. He laughs that sweet honey laugh of his mother, the one bleeding sunshine and wonder and when Ray closes his eyes, he can see her, and the feeling is so _full._ The feeling is both bitter and lovely. It burns holes in his chest. 

He’s melting, and he doesn’t even know.

Scratch that. He knows. He just doesn’t care.

Ray falls in love with Michael’s calloused fingers and the fluff of his hair when he wakes up and how he hogs blankets and the soft lines of his cheeks and the redness of his lips and the redness of the bruises he _leaves_ with his lips and everything and everything and everything.

Ray falls in love with love itself.

 

* * *

 

Ray is twenty years old, and gunshots rain like thunder.

He’s sixteen all over again, and lies trembling and breathless on the IB hideout floor, surrounded by his dead. There’s blood-spattered blonde hair in tufts beside him. He doesn’t dare breathe. 

He’s not sure why they haven’t killed him yet- perhaps they don’t see him. Perhaps they just aren’t looking hard enough. 

Ray’s eyes are dry despite the mess. He isn’t capable of feeling yet, feeling _that much_ \- he can only think. 

_Hellbenders_ is the only logical explanation, they raided while they were asleep, they’ve been locked in a shitty territory war for weeks now-

He tenses.

Traces back.

It doesn’t make sense. How could they get in? Wasn’t there somebody-

And then he remembers.

He was supposed to be keeping watch. 

He doesn’t utter a sound, but inside his head everything is aflame. He forgot. He forgot on the worst day, the worst night, why wasn’t he there, he would have died for them, it’s his fault, it’s his fault, it’s his fault. 

He thinks, _I killed them_. And then-

_Michael._

The Hellbenders are still hanging around in the hideout, voices rumbling. He can’t hear them over the pulse thumping far too loudly in his wrist, in his neck. He doesn’t dare move, but he has to know. He has to see if Michael’s alive.

He trembles. Waits. It’s minutes or maybe years before they leave, every stomp of their boots crushing his ribs, crushing his head. He breathes, once, deep and shaky, before- before-

A match strikes.

Falls.

His vision goes red and white, gold and white, white and white and white. The smell of gasoline reeks, and hangs, and burns. The walls are on fire. The ground is on fire. 

The bodies...

He pushes himself up, surrounded by gold and terror and his lovely, beautiful dead. Something crackles, close, and he lets out a guttural scream. Fire climbs, he notices. He beats the flames on his pant leg out with his palm. The pain ripples. The pain screams, too.

Somehow, by some miracle, he crawls to the door. Breathes in ash. Chokes on his own tonsils. 

There’s a boy standing in the crumbling doorway, face illuminated in red and yellow, stumbling slowly backwards. He’s holding a clean knife and a single grenade. His curls are singed.

It takes Ray a second to realize that it’s Michael.

He tries to say something, anything, but smoke and regret clog his throat. 

Michael sees him anyway.

The world is numb. The world is greedy and terrible and apathetic. The world is blind, _and_ _just this once, can’t I have something, he is all I have left, he is all I’ve ever had left-_

Michael runs.

Ray falls.

 

* * *

 

Ray is twenty-one years old, and sees freckles in his dreams.

His life has become a meaningless routine- eat, sleep, shoot, existential crisis. He’s got a shitty apartment in Murrieta Heights, and has rebuilt his gun collection solely through dealing and assassinations. A weapon for hire. He spends his days on edge and shaking, sweating through his nightmares. 

He forgets about homes, he forgets about family. He doesn’t believe in happiness. Joy is a lie spread to calm the masses.

His demons are his only friends, and he knows them by name.

_Bitterness. Apathy. Havoc. Pessimism._

_Michael Vincent Jones._

Betrayal sizzles in his veins. He has become a time-bomb, a rocket, a grenade. And sometimes, he explodes. There is so much of himself shattered in the city, in rubble cracks, in scorch marks, in alleys.

There is something so beautiful about dying, he thinks. 

It’s quiet.

The world is blind. 

Ray falls in love with self-hatred and the cold, sharp feeling of knives on his fingertips, with blackouts and dirt and a ritual cleaning of his hot-pink pistol, just in case he needs to escape. One day, he’ll do it. One day he’ll be brave enough.

Ray falls in love with endings.

 

* * *

 

Ray is twenty-four years old.

It’s been years, he tells himself. He is not the same dark-hearted boy he was. Michael is not the same coward, either. 

They are different, now, and past it. They’re part of a crew. It’s impossible to bring their past lives into it without splitting the seams.

He says to Gavin, “Yeah, we used to have a thing, I guess. It was kind of dumb. We were just kids.”

“What happened, then?”

Ray only laughs. 

Looks down at his feet.

Something red-hot is brimming in his chest.


	2. IRON // FUSE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, you might be wondering why this has a second chapter. well, i realized i was totally cluttering everything by having separate stories for each fake ah backstory, so i decided to compile them in one convenient page. that's why this chapter is a reupload of another story.  
> so yeah, this is my penultimate backstory story.
> 
> if you haven't read this before, ignore everything i just said.  
> heart you!  
> -E

“Fuck,” Michael heaves, stroking his purpling arm. 

He’s ten and is learning hand-to-hand from the best fighter on the East Coast. Except it’s not learning, not really- it’s less about techniques and more about toughness, more about hurt.

“Don’t be such a baby,” his trainer scolds. “Pain is important. Pain will help you more than books will, kid. Now, one more time. See if you can block me.”

He can’t.

Bruises blooming blue and black on pale skin, he is taught to play dirty and loud. All his life is a rigorous routine of sessions for skills he doesn’t have uses for yet. Not yet a teen but tougher than one, with dark circles and darker eyes, fists scabbing over with memories of punches and split skin. He sings himself lullabies of battle cries and war songs. 

His dad doesn’t talk to him anymore, but then again, did he ever? He’s too busy. All that  _business_  that Michael’s not allowed to know about. He’s got sharp ears, though, and there is always opportunity to eavesdrop.

He knows about something called ‘coke’, for instance, but not what it’s for. The bombs he is taught to build and diffuse have no relevance, no goal but perfection and speed. And everyone is always,  _always_  talking about pigs. Michael’s not stupid. He knows they don’t mean the farm animal.

His days are spent training, or lounging in his father’s echoing mansion, picking from endless stacks of video games and eating lean, calculated-calorie meals at the head of an empty table. He has people to talk to- the maid, the trainers, the cook and her son- but otherwise is locked up in his room when the adults come over for what he can only imagine to be lavish banquets in the dining room, and he only hears what they don’t care to keep quiet. 

Because, sometimes, their words echo.

“You have the Newark sector? I’m telling ya, if you slip up again...”

“Look. My son’s a prodigy... he’ll fight for us soon enough..”

“We gotta eliminate the Maranzanos. They’ve caused us far too much trouble, don’t you think?”

He thinks it’s normal, this life. He knows to take care of himself.

It does not occur to him that he’s becoming a child soldier.

 

* * *

 

“Fuck,” Michael spits, pausing for breath. “You.”

He’s fifteen, a dynamite boy, fuse burning far too quick. He faces his father- his general, his boss- and simmers in fury as the truth of his upbringing sinks into his veins like gasoline into water.

The ball has dropped, and now he knows everything. 

His father is a crime boss. 

Mafia, Michael supposes, but then again, it doesn’t really matter what his father is- only why he hid it. He’s just so full of rage- fifteen years of censorship and secrets, of training and safeguards and _for what?_  To be his father’s weapon? 

His bullet?

His father only smiles in response, thin and wan and lifeless. “Language, Michael.”

“Go fuck yourself. I’m not your toy.”

The smile drops, quick. “You’re going to fight for this family, whether you like it or not. You’re a Jones. This is your life.”

“No, it’s  _not_. Fuck your plans. You lied to me my entire goddamn life, and now you expect me to  _work_  for you?”

His father laughs, cold and blank-eyed. “Oh, I never lied to you. Not once. You’re a soldier, remember? I say jump, you say how high. I say shoot, you  _don’t fucking question me_. Now, are you going to man up and help me with this job?”

Michael feels a punch to his stomach, and remembers the sound of a hundred bullets meeting paper targets. “Didn’t you hear anything I said? I’m not killing for you.”

Eyes turn to steel. “You don’t have a choice in this.”

But that’s the thing about family.

There is always a choice.

Back in his room, Michael stares at the ceiling and watches the fan spin endlessly. There is always a solution. There is always a way out. He is formulating something, anything, whatever will get him away with a...

_Bang_.

 

* * *

 

“Fuck,” Michael pants, all ablaze, mind whirring- no,  _ticking_. 

He’s seventeen and the world is on fire and he’s holding the match that lit it. Except it’s less of a match and more of a button, a timer, a wire.

_ 00:03 _

_ 00:02 _

_ 00:01 _

_ 00:00 _

Boom.

The explosion rocks the street, and he can’t help but stare, transfixed, even when he knows he has to keep moving. The mansion is alight and falling to pieces. White pillars blacken and dance, everything orange and red and blue and yellow and screaming. He’s running, giggling, grinning like a madman, battle cries spewing from his mouth in a frenzy of spite and crazed glee.

_ “Desperta ferro!” _

Another explosion, this time splitting the beams.

_ Awake, iron! _

The cook’s son- Andrew- jogs next to him, struggling to keep up but laughing all the same.

“You motherfucker,” he heaves, face red. “You actually did it. You blew up the bitch.”

“Hell fucking yeah, I did!”

Michael feels alive, wind freezing his skin, backpack bouncing against his shoulders. He whoops, and the fire is dancing in his irises and it’s beating at his ribcage. He can feel the heat from ten, twenty yards away, and it’s beautiful and he’s running and he’s  _free_.

He’s no longer a prisoner to his own home, his own destiny. He wants to wreak havoc, so wreak havoc he shall. It’s simple. Really.

They steal a Ferrari from his dad’s garage and drive to the airport, fearless and flame-born, and board the red-eye to Los Santos. And of course it’s Los Santos. City of broken windows, broken people. They’ll fit right in.

They watch a hundred thousand speckles of orange light dance, safe in their window seats 10,000 feet up, and wonder which one is their fire. 

 

* * *

 

“Fuck,” Michael mutters, pushing against the wind.

He’s eighteen and late to a meeting with who he hopes will soon be a part of his crew. He’s already brought together seven teenage rebels, uniquely talented, ridiculous and dumb and perfectly fitting together as a team- but they’re missing a piece.

Michael is the leader, of course, and does demolitions; Andrew handles weapons and transactions; Mike- bless his idiot heart- is in charge of tech; Barbara organizes everything and plans their next moves; Lindsay’s the hand-to-hand expert; Kerry’s got connections like you wouldn’t believe, and, well, no one’s really sure exactly what Dylon does.

But the one thing they don’t have is a sniper.

So he sidles up to the grimiest alleyway in the grimiest part of Los Santos, hood up, hands in his pockets. The guy they found through craigslist is also hooded, whistling a cheerful tune. As Michael waves, he sees the guy’s face for the first time. He’s olive-skinned and wearing glasses and above all else, he’s  _young_ \- small and thin and gaunt as all hell. No teenager should look so haunted, he thinks. No boy should be so terrorized.

His name is Ray, and he’s been through a lot, Michael learns. He’s lost a family and a crew already, at only eighteen, always the sole survivor. It takes its toll, apparently, but he’s got talent. A metric fuckton of it. Confirmed kills up the ass. 

Plus, he’s funny.

And so Ray joins the crew, which is nonsensically christened ‘IB’. Michael laughs at it, because Mike is an idiot, and for some reason, it sticks.

And so they start burning through the city, one convenience store and territory marker at a time.

 

* * *

 

“Fuck,” Michael breathes into Ray’s mouth, everything humming electric symphonies and singing of sunlight. 

He’s nineteen and falling down a rabbit hole. Los Santos is heavenly in the summer, but not as heavenly as this moment, this whole entire _everything_ , sweaty hands and rose lips and Ray’s neck littered with bruises of the friendlier kind.

The day is so bright and so beautiful, but not so much as Ray is, in this light, in this city, everything dripping and racing and beating. It is just so unfamiliar, the casual affair of it, the simplicity, how easily they fuse together to one body, one soul. 

It hurts to look at him. It hurts to look away.

They’re both war boys and lost, hungry for anything that will make them feel fireworks. 

For Michael, it’s a simple fix- the smell of gunpowder, the sound of burning, the taste of bitten tongues. For Ray, it’s potshots at strangers, midnight snack runs, and weed, always weed. 

They know they aren’t supposed to be what they are. They know it’s unprofessional and probably dysfunctional, they know it’s wrong and immoral and estranged, they know no one will understand the point to which they would burn for each other, to which they would kill for each other. 

They find their fireworks in each other’s mouths. 

 

* * *

 

_Fuck_ , Michael thinks,  _fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m fucked, I’m so fucked-_

He’s twenty and dead for sure.

He is lying on the IB base floor, stiller than the corpses that surround him, fallen like snow, empty as husks. 

The men who busted the door down are wearing Hellbender sigils on their jackets, and of course it’s the Hellbenders, of fucking  _course_  it is. Territory wars and bar fights, every word an offense. They’re assholes and they push their power around and- 

Michael is procrastinating his own emotions. Dylon is literally lying bloodied and beaten two feet in front of him, and Lindsay behind. His friends are dead. His friends are fucking  _dead_. Ray is-

_Ray_.

Michael seizes up, breathing constricted, shocked straight to the bone. It can’t be happening, no fucking way is it real, it’s a nightmare, it’s a nightmare and he just has to wake up. 

He doesn’t wake up.

_ Why can’t I just fucking wake up? _

He hears the echoes of boots stomping on concrete, a chuckle, a sigh. He screws his eyes shut. He wishes he was dead. He wishes it so badly. There is nothing left for him in this world. 

The men in the boots begin to leave, laughing and slinging their guns over their shoulders. They stand in the doorway, sweeping over their victory, and one pulls out a brick red gas can. He loops around the room, draping gasoline over bodies and giggling to himself, as Michael tries his hardest not to breathe.

_ Tick. Tick. Tick. _

They all stride out, self-important and high on murder, and a match strikes.

And a match falls.

And a match lights the room red.

Michael rolls hard, curling up and heaving and trying to find a way out of this.

He grabs what’s nearest.

It’s smoke and mirrors and yellow-orange-red, a wall of ash between him and the bodies, so he bolts for the door as soon as it’s clear, t-shirt pulled up over his nose. He notices what he’s actually holding- a knife, a grenade, all he can salvage from the dust and flame. There’s blood in streaks of scarlet down his arm, but he doesn’t think it’s his own. He leans against the doorframe and heaves, once, twice, three times, and turns to leave it all behind. 

The heat is so alike to what he felt after setting the mansion alight. Andrew’s face was red from running. 

Michael’s stomach rolls. 

He turns back, one last time, terrified of what he’ll find. He sees only light, and flickers, and dark figures lying askew on the floor, peaceful, as if they are all asleep. 

Until something coughs below him.

Unblinking brown eyes stare up at him, pleading and smoke-clouded and full. Ray is on hands and knees, covered in soot, and Michael is faced with a choice.

Ray and regret.

Escape and solitude.

He can’t control his feet, his mind, his heart. There is panic rising in his chest like dark water, like black fire, and he doesn’t know what to do or say and he is so close to losing his head, his body.

He backs away.

Turns.

Runs like hell.

 

* * *

 

“Fuck,” Michael groans, again, slamming his fist on the table and splitting the skin.

He’s twenty and hates himself for losing Ray in the smoke, in the panic. It was split second and terrible and he hopes he is happy, wherever he is, whoever he’s become.

He misses the IB crew every day. Lindsay’s laugh, Mike’s shitty impressions, Barb shaking her head at their antics- they haunt him. Every waking moment. He doesn’t know how Ray handled it the first time.

Michael splits his days between searching for Ray and taking jobs from upstart crews who need demos or muscle. It’s a shitty life for a shitty person, and he drags himself weary through the days, grasping at straws for information, scanning crowds for purple hoodies, rooftops for pink sniper rifles.

He’s asked just about everyone he’s got connections to- Luna and Demarais from the LSPD, Sorola from the Vagos, even that Pattillo chick everyone raves about.

Nothing.

Fucking nothing. No Narvaez, no Brownman, not in obituaries or databases, nothing left of the boy who blushed red under his fingers, who killed without thinking, who mashed buttons and loved Pokemon and ate nothing but Top Ramen every day for weeks on end. 

The days are dark.

Michael begins to fizzle out.

 

* * *

 

“Fuck,” Michael says, offhand, an explanation. “I didn’t mean it.”

It’s the first night after they find out they’re immortal in the gang war outside Ramsey’s apartment. Ray and Michael stand alone together in one of Geoff’s bedrooms. They’re on opposite sides, boxed in and both terrified of each other. Everyone else is asleep. 

It’s quiet, and the room is so cold. 

“Michael-” Ray is choking his words out. “You  _asshole_.”

The room grows incomprehensibly colder.

He tries to say he loves him-  _loved him_ -, but instead it comes out as “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I know, man. I know.” Ray laughs, a dark rich thing, cracked and crumbling. He looks smaller and thinner than ever, bundled in a jacket three sizes too big, hands disappearing into his pockets. His eyes are downcast and shining with what has to be tears. 

Michael misses what they had. He misses the jokes, the heists, the armed robberies. He misses the kissing and the pranks and the camaraderie. He misses Ray-and-Michael. Whoever  _they_  used to be. 

He imagines the scene again- fire and blood and smoke- but this time, he doesn’t run. This time he stretches out his hand, grips tightly to soft fingers, pulls Ray out of the flames and into his arms. 

Michael curls his hand into a fist. 

_ No take-backs. _

 

* * *

 

“Fuck,” Michael laughs. “Now  _there’s_  a story.”

Geoff’s asking him about his history over some moonshine and a round of Halo, two months after the Fake AH Crew is formed, and it’s hard to stop himself once he starts.

It’s all over the place and dark and broken, but it’s a backstory to rival any superhero’s.

Geoff watches him, wide-eyed, and whistles. “Damn, dude. You and Ray, huh?”

“Me and Ray,” he mutters back, letting out a sigh.

A fire burns white-hot in his stomach.


	3. HOLLOW // FILTH

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr at lindsqyjones, and twitter at @saltwaterrayne !  
> -E

Rich, _dirty_ rich, that’s what Gavin is, what he’s always been.

He’s eleven years old and spoiled so very rotten, something hydrochloric hollowing him out from the very beginning. There’s money pouring out his mouth with every taffy-accented word, all private-school and upper-class and just the wrong side of overly flamboyant. 

His parents are stacked, riding stock market highs, spilling luxury out of their fingertips. There is a mansion in Oxfordshire and a beach house in Brighton and a holiday cottage up near Yorkshire, hundreds of games and thousands of movies and sweets in glass dishes and a maid and a babysitter and three Persian cats.

Gavin has everything in the world, and yet, nothing. 

He stares at his ivory ceilings and wishes, every night, for something to fill the hole in his chest he doesn’t have a name for yet, the hole he will soon know as _abandon_. He wishes for something a bit like acceptance, a bit like attention, a bit like a home.

He wishes for his parents to see him, really _see_ him, just the once, past the yearbook-photo smile and the uniform and the awkward once-a-month meal they have, the three of them, in silence, across too much mahogany.

He wants with every string in his heart.

 

* * *

 

Selfish, useless, that’s what Gavin is, what he’s always been.

He’s fourteen years old and that’s all his parents ever tell him, anyway, and he hates himself for liking his own wealth and he hates himself for the twitching in his fingers, the begging in his bones.

He knows he hadn’t been born afraid- because no one is _born_ afraid- but he can’t quite understand how he learned to fear his bloodline. It boils and bubbles like sulfur in his stomach, this darkness, this terror, this _shame_. 

No one at school wants to talk to him, the arrogant boy, the young entitled. His cats don’t really count as friends, per se, no matter how much he wants them to. Days and nights are spent alone, awash, abandoned, tumbling from sunrise to sunset, everything muted and tumultuous and gray. 

His parents argue, now more so than ever, a flurry of words flinging around houses like bullets, and blades. He tries not to hear them, but closed doors and headphones only go so far. Wishes only go so far. He feels the tremors, sees the devastation in the scuffs on the wall, on his father’s open desktop.

This is when Gavin learns his own way of fighting back. His own way to strike the fear from his fingertips. The hole from his stomach.

He begins with the firewall.

 

* * *

 

Reckless, careless, that’s what Gavin is, what he wants, what he’s becoming.

He’s sixteen years old and taking everything, everything, _everything_. 

London is alive in the torrent, and Gavin is alive in the crime of it all, and he is drunk and laughing and on the run from red-blue lights. They glimmer cobalt and ruby in the spattering raindrops, in puddles he barrels through, tires spinning in the grime. And of course, it’s an Adder he’s taken on a joyride, on his tirade for something, anything to fill him, to trigger all the emotions he’s missed out on.

And oh, how beautiful it feels, how nasty, how ridiculously perfect, the moment, the scene, the setting. He tears through the streets of London town, paying no heed to anything but the freezing wind in his hair, the freezing rain stilling his twitching fingers. His yellow-rimmed sunglasses are useless when they’re covered in droplets but he doesn’t care, doesn’t need to see well to navigate the roads.

At some point he pulls over, gives in, laughing too hard to even care about the consequences. There are the cuffs, and there is the police car, but also there is Gavin, still grinning. There are fireworks filling the hole in his stomach with something very much like ecstasy.

His parents pick him up a couple hours later, stern and stiff and treating it like an inconvenience rather than an arrest, which is surprisingly unfulfilling. They are cold and they are haughty but they never raise their voices over their usual sighs.

He doesn’t know why he feels so annoyed by it. He supposes he expected something more, something dramatic, some kind of wildfire.

That’s when Gavin realizes why he did it, why he cracked the window and hot-wired the car and spun donuts across half of London. It was fun, of course it was, but he can’t help but shake the feeling that he wanted- no, _needed_...

Attention.

They’re calling it kleptomania, they’re calling it BPD, they’re calling it teenage hormones, stupidity, NPD, ADHD, anything that can be fixed with six pills a day. They paint him in darkness, as this boy part-flame and part-knife, this boy half destroyed.

Gavin keeps taking, taking, whatever he can grab. His fingers still tremble, and he laughs in venom and bitter loneliness. He is screaming to be heard, and it sounds like a whimper.

He folds in on himself again.

 

* * *

 

Furious, tired, that’s what Gavin is, what he’s grown to be.

He’s seventeen years old and three all-nighters deep into dark web territory, everything a blur of numbers and letters and sums and sums and sums. He isn’t sure why he’s doing this, what he’s doing, how he’s getting out of it, but his parents haven’t spoken to him in weeks and he’s tired of being nothing but a shadow to them.

It’s one of his bad nights, in a bad week, and he’s this close to breaking but he just has to keep going. He has to tear it all down.

He’s transferring every pound and penny in the Free family bank accounts to somewhere else, he thinks it’s some charity, he’s lost track of everything so far. This is good. It’s beautiful, this act of starting over, this act of war.

He watches the numbers trickle down, millions to thousands to hundreds to tens to-

There’s something corrosive in his veins, he realizes. It burns, and it fuels him, and his muscles tense. This is his beginning. This is his exit door. 

With the last transfer, he buys a plane ticket. 

It’s the red-eye to Los Santos, and there is a new life waiting there, there _has_ to be, he’s already fucked himself royally and it’s the only good place for any soon-to-be criminal.

He escapes in the night. 

In his shadows.

 

* * *

 

Awake, alive again, that’s what Gavin is, now that he’s here, now that he’s seeing everything for the first time through gold-rimmed sunglasses.

He’s nearly eighteen and new to this world of crime and grime and murder. It’s fun and it’s odd and it’s nothing he’d have expected- these reckless abandoned, everyone just like him, just as broken. It’s a land without moral. Perfect place for him.

Though, for all his ridiculous genius, practicality has been forgotten. With whatever cash he has left, he buys as many weapons as he can. He doesn’t realize the depth of his escape just yet. He doesn’t realize that it’s all real.

Until he reads that the Free inheritance has been destroyed. That he’s effectively ruined their lives. That he’s left himself broke in this unfamiliar city, in this nightmare of a lucid dream.

_Good,_ he thinks. And then, _shite._ And then, _I didn’t bloody think this through, did I?_

He stumbles his way through the city that week, learns of the crannies, the gangs. Los Santos spins, it’s dizzying, but it’s something godly in its chaos and its clamor. 

Gavin spreads the word about himself, a hacker for hire, a mercenary. Doesn’t mention his only experience with a gun is at his uncle’s private shooting range.

He’ll learn.

He has to.

 

* * *

 

Broken down, heartless, that’s what Gavin is, what this city’s turned him into.

He’s nineteen and corroded completely, fucked up and drunk more often than not and scrambling for his next job, his next meal, and it’s perfect. He’s making his own path, somehow, whatever way he can make ends meet. It’s a dark life, a messy life, but it’s all he has. It’s what he’s chosen.

He knows how to shoot now, sort of, maybe. Better with a knife, really, but that’s far too old-school of a skill. He’s been hired for myriads of crews and gangs, their loose cannon for a day, never staying longer than two jobs. He’s run with the Cockbites, the Vagos, Team B, anyone that’ll shell out the meager sum he’s charging. 

It’s modest, perhaps too much so considering what he was born into, but he’s dealing with it.

Some days, though, he doesn’t. Some days he cries. Some days he’s sick of moldy motel walls and microwave meals, some days he can’t remember what it was like to not count every dollar, every cent, some days he misses London and luxury and the mere feeling of security.

Some days, he can’t shoot. He feels the gun in his hands grow colder and colder and he slips, some days, he can’t kill, some days, there is a void in his stomach and a storm in his head, in his fingers. Some days, there is nothing funny about death.

And so it goes. 

The boy bites into the city, and the city bites back.

 

* * *

 

Beautiful, dark, that’s what Gavin is, what this city leaks.

He’s at some club, somewhere, he thinks he had a reason for going at some point but he is lost in the music, in the hearts all beating at 140 BPM. Someone slipped him drugs, for sure, and maybe it’s ecstasy or PCP or adderall but he reasons that it doesn’t really matter. Everything is flashing, his brain is melting, his entire body is vibrating, the bass line beating him to a pulp. He drowns in the tempo, bodies tumbling something fierce around him, synth popping in his eardrums like bubbles, like sherbet, purple and gold and red as blood.

People are screaming, _louder, louder, louder,_ like they’re on a swing and the DJ is pushing. The bass drops and so does Gavin, the room clouding in a mess of neon and jet, blurred and swirling, everything filthy in its fizzling energy.

At least he knows now that even pills don’t fix him. Don’t patch the ragged hole in his stomach.

He comes to hours later in a bedroom in a fancy hotel with a girl, a rich girl, he barely sees her face, and they’re just dancing to the imaginary lullabies the drugs sing them. She has her purple hair in ringlets. They’re mesmerizing. 

He’s so fucking high. 

They don’t end up sleeping together, she’s far too smashed and he’s coming down far too hard to glean any sort of enjoyment from it, but they lie in that bed and hum to nothing for hours. Los Santos stretches black and gold behind the floor-to-ceiling window, and he grins something feral, because this city is so close to being his.

When he wakes up the next morning, the girl is gone.

So is his wallet.

 

* * *

 

Rich, _dirty_ rich, that’s what Gavin is, what Ramsey’s made him.

He’s twenty-two and flying, Los Santos sitting pretty below. The Fake AH Crew has done a great many wonders, and most are green paper rectangles. It is something to behold, piles of cash thrown around like grenades, like tennis balls, like it’s nothing. They are immortal and they are cocked and loaded and they are blinding in their brightness, in their infamy.

Gavin is happy again, truly happy, everything turning to gold in front of him, like he is Midas and he wants to touch everything because this _has_ to be a dream, these people, this life, this reward. 

His fingers still twitch, not with emptiness, but with anticipation. Some days, he can even ignore the gaping hole in his chest.

Some days.


End file.
